For over 10 years, Two Lines Press has specialized in bringing previously untranslated books to English readers. A mission they solidified five years ago with the launch of The Calico Series, which publishes anthologies of translated poetry and short stories.
In honor of their newest release, a collection of Japanese short stories called Unusual Fragments: 20th-Century Japanese Fiction (paperback), I spoke to lead editor Sarah Coolidge about what goes into these anthologies, and Fragments specifically.
For people unfamiliar with it, what is The Calico Series from Two Lines Press about?
The Calico Series is an imprint of Two Lines Press. We publish two a year, and each collects translated fiction or poetry in thematic editions. It grew out of the work we were doing at the Two Lines journal with special features, and we thought: hey, these could be books! We’ve published Arabic poetry on the topic of “home” [Home], queer Brazilian writing [Cuíer], and Latin American horror stories [Through The Night Like A Snake].
And then what is Unusual Fragments about?
Unusual Fragments is five stories by older Japanese writers who haven’t gotten their due in English. There’s a story of a woman who carries her tiny husband around in a box, taking him to an opera with her. Another story is a deeply complex psychological narrative of a woman who becomes extremely paranoid when her husband goes on his yearly trip (a trip he never explains to her) and begins to seal up the house. There are hallucinations, taboo desires, and other surprises that make these stories so entertaining. I could read each one over and over (and have, while editing!) and get something new each time.
So are the stories from authors who are all of Japanese descent or do they have to be Japanese people who still live in Japan?
The idea was to look at writers writing in Japanese and who are therefore part of Japanese literature, regardless of where they live. We wound up published stories by authors who do live in Japan (or lived, in the case of the deceased Taruho Inagaki), but we were open to authors who wrote in Japanese but lived elsewhere.
For so long, there was so much hesitancy to publish translations in the U.S., and so many Japanese translators told me that until the last few years it was very difficult to get publishers on board to publish their authors. So while it’s great that we have so many young, contemporary Japanese writers being published in English translation right now, we missed out on decades of amazing work. I wanted to read more of those authors.
You also mentioned in Unusual Fragments‘ Editor’s Note that four of the five authors are women, and the fifth is queer. In assembling this collection, was that a consideration, or did you put this together and then realize it had a diverse roster?
A bit of both. I always ask translators for work by women and queer writers, as I know we’ll get plenty of male writers regardless.
That being said, we didn’t set out to make a collection that excluded straight white authors. We just chose the stories we found most exciting.
I do think we were most interested in stories that felt contemporary in some way, or that felt like they inspired the contemporary Japanese stories and novels we’re reading today. And I think women and queer writers were doing a lot of that interesting work, speaking about aspects of society that aren’t talked about. Some of my favorite writing in general is finding creative ways to talk about things, the gymnastics we go through to communicate uncomfortable things with ourselves and others.
And then, besides the geographical distinction, what other parameters are there for the stories or contributors? Like, do the stories have to be new to this collection, under a certain wordcount, written within a certain timeframe…?
We asked that the stories hadn’t been published in English before. That’s always something we ask for The Calico Series, as our goal is to introduce new translations, not anthologize work that can already be found elsewhere.
For this one, we were open to really long pieces. Some Calicos have more contributors and shorter pieces, but in Japan it’s more common to write really long stories, sometimes 10,000 words. I wanted to be open to considering these as well.
As for the timeframe, again because of how few writers were published in translation for so long, I kept this open as well. My focus was more on how the pieces felt rather than what year they were written. If a piece felt too old-fashioned stylistically next to some of the other pieces, that was something to consider. I wanted these stories to create a world together, to give the reader an experience, rather than give a survey of 20th century Japanese literature, for example. The only criteria they had to meet was to belong to an older generation of Japanese writers working in the 20th century.
contributor Inagaki Taruho in his mid-twenties
So, once you had the parameters set, how did you find the writers and stories? Did you look through Japanese literary journals, did you host an open call…?
For all Calicos, I start by talking to translators and reading as much as I can. Once we have a couple core pieces that define the collection, I issue an open call for submissions, in addition to continuing to solicit people directly. I knew about Nabuko Takagi because we’d published a story of hers ages ago in the Two Lines journal. Her story was the first one we accepted for this book. I’m a huge fan of Taeko Kono from the great collection Toddler Hunting And Other Stories that came out several years ago, and so I reached out to her translator Lucy North to ask to see more. I reached out to other translators I’ve worked with over the years and invited them to send me work. I did look through some old anthologies of Japanese stories as well.
Also, when you started approaching people about contributing to Unusual Fragments, did anyone say to you, “You should really speak to this person, they’d be perfect for it?”
Hmm, translators definitely recommend authors to me. Translators also recommended I speak to other specific translators. Sometimes it was hard if I was told about an author but there was no record of any translations of their work online, since I couldn’t get a sense of it as someone who doesn’t read Japanese. I was actually trying to track down someone who had translated Takako Takahashi decades ago, as I’d been told to look into her, when Brian Bergstrom, whom I’ve worked with before, reached out to say he’d been working on a story of hers. So that was a great coincidence. Otherwise we may not have been able to include her. I asked Margaret Mitsutani if there were any stories she’d always wanted to translate, and that’s when she told me about “Husband In A Box.” She described it and I was all in.
Some previous books in The Calico Series were not just geographical but also genre-based. Through The Night Like A Snake, for instance, is subtitled Latin American Horror Stories. Given that, what genres are represented by the stories in Unusual Fragments, and was that also a consideration in the decision making process?
Yes, I also try to have something other than geographic location that makes a Calico cohesive. For Unusual Fragments, we didn’t want to limit it to a single genre, but I do think we asked for surprising, strange, and taboo stories. Like I mentioned before, I really loved the Nabuko Takagi story we’d published in Two Lines, which is just totally bizarre and brilliant, involving an amorphous creature pulled out of the sea. And I loved the dark, psychological stories of Taeko Kono. It felt like there was a similar texture to them, even though one was fantastical and the other psychological, that was worth exploring.
One interesting thing about Unusual Fragments, which makes it different from some other translated anthologies I’ve seen, is that every story was translated by a different person. And this seems to be a common practice with The Calico Series. You kind of already talked about this, but is there a reason you do this?
Yes! For a couple reasons. First is just to get to work with as many translators as we can. Since we don’t publish many books per year, this is really our chance to work with more translators, support them (monetarily, but also with feedback, events for the books, publicizing their projects), as well as discover translators we haven’t worked with before.
The second reason is I think it’s nice to think of these kinds of collections as group projects. Even though I’m the lead editor, I didn’t make this book on my own. I collaborated with all these translators and authors and my editorial team at Two Lines. And I think that’s a strength to the series. We all have our specific tastes but it’s good to have people bring new dimensions to a project. Translators are drawn to different projects, and I like the polyphonic quality Calicos have as a result of this.
Hollywood loves adapting short stories into movies. Are there any stories in Unusual Fragments that you think could work well as a movie?
Well, I think it’d be tough because of the ambiguity in many of the stories. We’re usually in one person’s perspective, so you’re never quite sure what reality really is. I do think some filmmakers are great at that, though. “Hot Day” [by Takako Takahashi] is perhaps the most cinematic. I could see a director really playing up the heat and doing something fun with the hallucination. But all of them could be made into movies; some would just have to be more experimental than others. You would lose a lot adapting Taeko Kono’s story, as it’s so internal. It’s a beautiful story in that it’s about so little and yet the tension builds to a terrible crescendo as we follow her thoughts in unexpected directions.
So, is there anything a potential reader might need to know about Unusual Fragments?
I guess just know you’re not missing anything. These are strange stories! They’re meant to perplex you at times. That’s part of the magic.
Finally, if someone enjoys Unusual Fragments, which of the earlier, and geographically-based, books in The Calico Series would you suggest they check out next?
I would suggest That We May Live, a collection of speculative fiction from China and Hong Kong. It’s a really odd, fun collection of stories that include mushroom houses, beasts that live among humans, and other wonderfully imaginative details that cast a new light on the world we live in.
